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Local
New Exhibit Opens At Sulphur Springs Museum
BY KENYA WOODARD
Sentinel Feature Writer
A new exhibit opening Friday at the Sulphur Springs Museum and Heritage shines a light on the life of middle class Black Floridians at the turn of the last century.
“Centennial Faces” is a collection of 49 black and white pictures taken by portrait photographer Alvan S. Harper, a Philadelphia native who owned a studio in Tallahassee.
The pictures are just a fraction of Harper’s eponymous collection of glass negatives which includes about 200 portraits of Philadelphians, about 100 views of Tallahassee buildings and street scenes, and about 1,300 portraits of groups of people and individuals.
Harper’s unidentified Black sub- jects are dressed finely in beaded dresses, tailored waistcoats, and elabo- rate hats suggesting they were affluent members of the capitol’s Gilded Age so- ciety.
In her book, “The Photographs of Alvan S. Harper”, author Joan Perry Morris surmises that Harper may have moved to Tallahassee after a meet- ing with Judge J. T. Bernard of Tal- lahassee, who was visiting Philadelphia at the 1876 Centennial Exposition as a
commissioner from Florida.
But how Harper became interested
in taking a large quantity of portraits of the capitol’s prominent Black citizens remains a mystery.
Posed upright with stoic faces, the pictures offer a glimpse into a world that is largely unknown, said museum founder and curator, Norma Robin- son.
To see evidence of well-to-do African-Americans living in segregated early-20th-century Florida – just a gen-
eration removed from slavery – is fasci- nating, she said.
“These photos have made me do a little more research,” she said. “These African-Americans lived better than they were supposed to for the time.”
Robinson said the pictures have conjured up many questions about the daily lives of the people staring back.
“What kinds of jobs did they have? Where did they live?” she said. “There’s a lot we don’t know.”
See the New Exhibit at
Sulphur Springs Museum
“Centennial Faces” opens Friday with a special reception from 3 to 7 p. m. The exhibit will run until Nov. 19th. The museum is located at 1101 E. River Cove St., in Tampa.
Admission is free.
For more information, visit www.sulpherspringsmuseum.org.
(Photo credit: Florida Mem- ory, the State Library & Archives of Florida)
Woman in embossed hat. Man in Satin-Faced Coat Young woman wearing Man in white coat with holding a cane. fancy hat. tilted hat.
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